Drive down Genito Road past Bayhill Pointe this month and you'll see the same thing you've seen for the past year and a half: three lanes of construction cones, a scattering of graders, and a Chipotle. That Chipotle, along with a drive-thru Starbucks, a Soccer Post sporting goods store, and Saffron Nail Lounge, makes up the entire built, open, walk-in portion of The Lake, the 105-acre mixed-use project that Chesterfield County has spent nine years promoting as home to the largest surf park on the East Coast.
If you've heard neighbors talk about "the wave pool going in on Genito," you've heard about something real. It just isn't close to finished, and the gap between what's been announced and what's actually usable right now is worth understanding if you live a few minutes away and keep wondering when to start planning weekends around it.
What You Can Actually Use Right Now
The only completed piece of The Lake is a single three-building outparcel near the Genito Road entrance, built by Henrico-based Commonwealth Construction. As of this spring, four tenants were confirmed open there:
- Chipotle, a full-service location with standard hours
- Starbucks, with its own dedicated drive-thru lane
- Soccer Post, a sporting goods store that relocated from Glen Allen
- Saffron Nail Lounge, a full-service nail and spa location
A fifth name has floated around the project for longer than any of these. Kilwins, the ice cream and confections chain with a Carytown location, signed a lease for space at The Lake back in 2023 and would have been the second Kilwins in the Richmond area. It hasn't shown up in reporting on tenants actually operating on site. That's a small but telling detail: a signed lease and an open storefront are two different things at The Lake, and the project's own history is the best evidence of how much distance can sit between them.
The Marquee Attractions Are Still Renderings
The reason The Lake made regional news in the first place isn't a burrito chain. It's the 13-acre artificial lake, designed with a cable system for wakeboarding and a floating obstacle course the developer has compared to something out of a ninja-warrior competition show, plus a separate 6-acre surf pool intended to generate rideable waves. Together with a planned amphitheater, these are supposed to be the actual draw, the reason a family from Short Pump or a sports tournament crowd from River City Sportsplex next door would choose to stay and spend money in Chesterfield instead of driving into Richmond.
None of it has a firm opening date. The lake and amphitheater were originally targeted for summer 2025, then pushed to spring 2026. As of this spring, developer Brett Burkhart told reporters there wasn't an anticipated opening date for the lake feature at all. The surf pool has fared worse. Back in 2024, Burkhart said it and the rest of the project's amenities would come online over the next five to ten years, depending on demand. As of last month, construction on the surf pool itself still hadn't moved forward.
Here's how the announced timeline compares to where things actually stand:
| Component | Original Target | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Retail outparcel (Chipotle, Starbucks, Soccer Post, Saffron) | Fall 2024 | Open and operating |
| 13-acre recreational lake | Summer 2025 | No confirmed opening date |
| 6-acre surf pool | 5 to 10 years from 2024, depending on demand | Construction not yet started |
| Vida on the Lake apartments (258 units) | Not previously set | Broke ground this summer; move-ins expected January 2028 |
| SpringHill Suites hotel (113 rooms) | Under site plan review as of last year | Land parcel changed ownership this spring; no construction start announced |
Why the Burrito Beat the Wave Pool
The pattern here isn't random, and it isn't really a story about one developer falling behind. It's a story about which parts of a project like this are cheap and fast to build, and which parts aren't.
A Chipotle and a drive-thru Starbucks are the kind of tenants a landlord can deliver quickly because the national chains largely fund and manage their own buildouts once the pad site and utilities are ready. That's a low-risk, well-understood transaction. An engineered 13-acre lake with a cable-wake system, or a 6-acre pool designed to generate surfable waves, is nothing like that. Those are civil engineering projects the developer has to fund and build directly, with specialized contractors, custom equipment, and far more that can go wrong along the way.
That's exactly where The Lake ran into trouble. English Construction, the general contractor responsible for infrastructure and the lake feature itself, stopped work on the site last fall and filed suit in Chesterfield Circuit Court, alleging it was owed $2.9 million for unpaid work. Commonwealth Construction and Taylor Long Properties filed their own mechanic's liens against the property that same October, and Henrico-based Ace Hydroseeding filed a separate lien for about $92,000 early this year. The lawsuit was dismissed as settled this spring, and all of the liens have since been released, which typically means the parties involved got paid. What hasn't followed is a new public timeline for when work on the lake itself will resume.
The Apartments Broke Ground Before the Water Did
The clearest sign of where The Lake actually stands right now isn't the lawsuit. It's what started construction this summer while the water features sat still. Virginia Beach-based Breeden Co. broke ground in August on Vida on the Lake, a 258-unit residential project on the western edge of the site, with a construction budget of $72 million. Two-bedroom units are expected to rent starting between $2,000 and $2,300 a month, with the first residents able to move in by January 2028.
Apartments are a financeable, well-understood product. Investors know how to underwrite them, banks know how to lend on them, and a developer can point to comparable rents in the area to justify the budget. A surf pool with no direct comparable in the region is a much harder sell to a lender, which may be part of why it's the piece still waiting.
What This Means If You Live Nearby
None of this makes The Lake a bad neighbor to Bayhill Pointe. It means the useful, everyday version of it exists now: a burrito run, a coffee stop with a drive-thru that doesn't require getting out of the car, a nail appointment, a new pair of cleats. That part works today and has for well over a year.
The version with a lake to kayak on or waves to surf is a different question with a different answer. Given how many times the schedule for those features has already moved, and given that the general contractor tied to building the lake only settled its dispute with the developer this spring, it's reasonable to treat any specific new date you hear with some skepticism until construction crews are visibly back on that part of the site. Chesterfield County's planning department has been the most reliable source of updates on where things stand, since permit filings and site plan reviews are public record before a shovel goes in the ground.
If you're weighing how a project like this might eventually affect the neighborhood, from traffic patterns on Genito to what kind of amenities end up within walking distance, that's the kind of question worth a real conversation rather than a guess based on a rendering. Heather Grubb has been tracking how Central Virginia's new construction actually gets built, not just how it gets announced, and is always glad to talk through what a project like The Lake might mean for your corner of Bayhill Pointe. Let's Connect.
